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''World War II Online'', commonly referred to as '''''WWIIOL''''' or '''''WW2OL''''', is a Massively Multiplayer Online First-person Shooter Computer Game ( MMOFPS ) set in 1940 - 42 World War II Europe . It's a combined arms war Simulation that immerses the player in an unforgiving, action-packed 3D and Surround Sound environment. A player can command or crew a variety of accurately modeled Aircraft , Armored Fighting Vehicles and Naval vessels or fight as a foot-soldier with a variety of Infantry weapons. The game is played in real time along-side or against other players as German , British (UK) and French forces in a 24/7 persistent world. Command structures and missions provide Strategic and Tactical layers while ranks provide a RPG layer by demonstrating leadership roles. WWIIOL made history as the first and still the only game of its type covering a ½ Scale Map of Western Europe with accurate, vintage 1940's era virtual computer generated military models and terrain. ORIGINAL RELEASE After a lengthy ''Operation Overlord'' invasion of Normandy . The first Sortie for WWIIOL was a controversial and admittedly disastrous beginning for the game, largely because it was rushed out to stores while still in a ''beta'' state. Opinions are split on whether this was due to financial problems at Strategy First (''the original publisher'') or because of overly optimistic reports from Cornered Rat Software (''CRS - the developer'') on the state of the code. CRS' public position is the former due to Strategy First's haste to get it on store shelves. Beta testers under non disclosure agreements repeatedly warned CRS that the game was not ready for release. The initial launch was a nightmare akin to the launch of Anarchy Online . Players discovered their new game required an immediate and lengthy 60 MB update to be Downloaded before they could even play online; daunting for what was at the time mostly 56k Modem users. As the developers worked feverishly behind the scenes to complete other promised features and fix the Software Bug s on the ''gold CD'' , even more immediate updating became necessary. The servers struggled to cope with the load produced by unexpectedly high and rapid sales, and the game that players experienced once they finally got in was dissapointingly unready for release. To make matters worse, three days prior to release the Colocation Network facility used by CRS went into bankruptcy and the new facility, managed by Playnet Inc., had a bad Fiber Optic cable that caused the 10,000 player capacity Server Cluster to drop players at the 1200 player mark. It took 3 days and 2 Cisco engineers to find the problem and several more days to fix it. Playnet's temporary solution was to set up multiple copies of the game-world on different servers, spreading the load out across the servers, but at some cost in game play. This solution lasted for several months before the developers finally worked out the server-side issues and were able to merge all of the servers into a single game-world. Despite around-the-clock efforts by the tiny, besieged, CRS development team, many of the features advertised on the game box had to be crudely implemented and many were left out. This, combined with the server problems, resulted in a substantial feeling of resentment from the game-playing public against CRS and Playnet. Game boxes were returned to stores in large numbers, and the rest simply withered on the stores shelves, back rooms, game rooms and bedrooms. Subscription fees for the first several months were waived, until the major problems with the game were resolved. This helped to retain many of the players, especially the long-term fans of the project, but it was not long before Playnet again had financial problems. They filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in late 2001 to buy time while they cut costs to the bare bone, mainly through painful lay-offs within their already undersized staff. The CRS development team kept the vision and have continued supporting and vastly improving the WWIIOL game, upgraded servers and invested in more network Infrastructure . Updates, or Patches to the game code, are released on an average of about every 6 weeks and have proven to be a strong feature of the game. These patches generally include a wide range of features and problem fixes to the extremely complex application code. Everything from new weapons and vehicles to audits of the performances of existing weapons and vehicles are part of the patching process as well as terrain, structure, game play and performance improvements. Understandably, these patches have become extremely popular with players, and ''patch day'' is always an exciting time and a weary time for the WWIIOL community. Unfortunately, as often as not, bugs and performance problems are introduced with these patches and some may persist for several subsequent Iterations of the game before the root of the problem is discovered sometimes unbalancing game play or affecting the performance of the game. After an ongoing series of these patches over the past 4 years, the game now vaguely resembles the original release version. RE-RELEASE WWIIOL is scheduled for a third retail release under the new campaign title ''Battleground Europe''. It was distributed across Europe in late 2005 and may be in the US by early 2006 by the game's new publishers GMX Media (Europe) and Trisynergy (USA). ''World War II Online: Battleground Europe'' is a much improved game over the original campaign release ''Blitzkrieg'' and is the current ( 2005 ) campaign being played by all subscribers. At present, everyone plays the same campaign on the same game map. At some point in the future, there may be a release of a North African campaign but those details aren't complete and it will most likely be a separate gaming arena. This will be totally dependent on the success or failure of this re-release. The launch of ''Battleground Europe'' is seen by some as a fresh start for the game which still suffers something of a bad reputation from the circumstances surrounding its original retail release. Unlike the first release, the ''Battleground Europe'' release schedule was driven by development and QA progress, followed by an extensive open beta. Like many MMORPGs , WWII Online/Battleground Europe is a continual work-in-progress. As with other MMOs some players are inclined to see this as a pay-for-beta while others see it as a commitment to the evolution of the game. The game continually expands in terms of gameplay, equipment, cities, etc. Players are sometimes puzzled or even bewildered by the development priorities of the team, often introducing radical changes to gameplay, if not quite as radical (and disastrous) as Star Wars Galaxies ''New Game Enhancements''. GAMEPLAY There are two sides: Axis vs. Allied . The Axis of course are the German forces and the Allies are the combined British (UK) and French forces. Other forces, such as those from the rest of Europe , the rest of the British Commonwealth , the United States , Australia , Russia , China or Japan have not been introduced into the campaign yet. Players can play which ever side they want and may even switch sides after waiting a mandatory period of a few hours that begins when they resign from their current enlistment. The general organization of the forces is historical. The exception is that the ''Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterparte (Nazi Party)'', the ''Schutzstaffel (SS)'', the ''Geheime Staatspolizei (Gestapo)'' and the ''swastika'' are not part of the game and any innuendo concerning these elements is against the terms of service for obvious reasons. WWIIOL is team-oriented. Players are various troops, pilots, gunners, tank commanders, naval destroyer captains, mission leaders, high commanders and are organized into Brigade s. Everyone plays in the brigade of their choice. Smaller Military Unit s of heavily-themed Squad s are independently managed by players and can use their own tactics but must the follow the brigade and strategic rules set by the high command players and cooperate with other squads and non-squad players. Being a squad member is optional but encouraged. Some squads have vigorous membership Rites . Anyone can, however, form their own squad, solicit members and register the squad with the high command for brigade assignment. The titles of rank are based on the military ranks of the time. Ranks are gained through a Secret player scoring system and rank is never lost as a result of a Bad Game Play day. When it gets right down to game play, everyone chooses a mission, joins the battleground and the war is on. In ''World War II Online: Battleground Europe'', it takes skill, teamwork, tactics, strategy, planning, patience and Perseverance to win or lose battles, make progress and individually rank upward. This game takes a lot of time, more time than many casual gamers may want to allow. Missions can sometimes last for hours, at times making the game seem like "more work than play", as so to speak. REQUIREMENTS Generally, in addition to other necessary computer system Component s like a Mouse and internet connection as well as any other amenities like Special Controllers , this game requires a powerful CPU (PC or Macintosh), an abundance of fast RAM , a fast Graphics Display Interface with Pixel Shader Version 2.0 Or Better , and any recently manufactured High RPM ATA-100 or SATA Hard Drive . See the Battleground Europe FAQ for current specifications. There are minimum system requirements listed, but the game runs extremely poorly on PC's of that spec. New players of this game should be prepared for substantial and ongoing hardware upgrades in order to meet their expectations in the levels of performance of game play. Unlike the traditional MMORPG , Battleground Europe is simulation based PvP. This means that calculations regarding Ordnance and weapon performance, collision, movement across the terrain, Graphical Rendering , Type Of Shading , sounds, etc need to be calculated on your system. This makes the game very demanding in terms of systems specifications, and because the demands are somewhat different than your average game with 500m visual ranges, its not unusual for players to discover their system settings aren't quite as stable as they thought. On average, mainstream off-the-shelf computers with in-game visual quality and performance settings adjusted to modest levels, require system Tweaking . It's necessary in order to reduce calculation performance Lag , Frame Rate stuttering, and even occasional system crashes. The vast majority of these problems are related to individual systems and it can be a complicated task to iron-out individual issues with individual players' computer systems. Getting the game to run efficiently on a system that likely runs many recent mainstream game titles can be bafflingly difficult. By comparison games such as Battlefield 2 and World Of Warcraft are computationally light, as most of their complexity is graphical. WWII Online tends to be very computationally heavy. As a result, performance is an ongoing concern. The game is not considered mainstream. Graphics quality is traded off for visual range at which vehicles and buildings are accurately perceived (to facilitate long range combat e.g. anti-aircraft guns firing at planes); detailed damage models are used rather than simple hit bubbles, which requires a trade off between the cost of calculating physics on complex models vs high poly counts for aesthetic needs. The Connectivity Bandwidth requirement, minimal for this game, isn't usually an issue unless there is a real problem with an internet service provider. CRS is generally committed in the near-term to maintaining playability for 56K modem users. Broadband connections, while desirable, are not available everywhere and are not necessary for online play. Due to the technical complexity of this game, performance can vary, as when new patches are added, sometimes performance is reduced by a significant amount, and can be fixed in another patch, and so on. TECHNICAL SUPPORT Technical support for player problems is provided mostly by other players in the discussion forums found at the WWIIOL website. Support directly from the developer is scant to non existent. The players who help players, known as the Player Support Corps, have managed to master, in most cases, the technical complexity of identifying individual system performance problems, finding and then offering solutions. A commonly offered solution is either a hardware upgrade or an entirely new PC. The Player Support Corps stays in contact with the CRS development team in resolving these issues in future game patches. Subscription billing and account problems are directly handled by Playnet Inc. DEVELOPERS ''World War II Online: Battleground Europe'' is continuously developed by Cornered Rat Software located in Bedford, Texas , USA. The development team, who are affectionately known as ''The Rats'', includes members with experience developing World War II flight simulations such as '' WarBirds '', '' Aces High '' and '' Air Warrior ''. They are a wholly-owned subsidiary of Playnet Inc. which administers subscriptions, billing, accounting, the world-wide networks and game servers. Cornered Rat Software was started to create WWII Online by a core group of former Warbirds staff. They also saw a potential to sell on some of the services and facilities they would need to run WWII Online to other developers, such as facilities management, co-location, networking infrastructure, accounting, etc. So a parent company, Playnet, was created to manage those assets. When the launch of WWII Online went south, the company effectively dropped the Playnet concept and now the only real distinction between Playnet and Cornered Rat Software is on paper. Although the presence and involvement of ''Zee Tongue'' (Joel W. Solloway) has been sorely missed over the years; many of the developers, such as ''Killer'' (John MacQueen), ''Gophur'' (Dana Baldwin), ''Doc'' (Geoff Evans), ''Kfsone'' (Oliver Smith) and ''Rafter'' (Al Corey) are still highly active within the game community and, for good and bad, players often find themselves in a situation of communicating directly with developers which many of them need to learn to STFU. Because of the scope of the game, the team comprises a wide and disparate range of specialization including Artists , Animators , 3d Modellers , Flight Modellers , simulation engineers, Game Designers , testers and several Programmers . With so many of the admittedly small team being specialized, the development track has often puzzled players not familiar with the nuances of Software Development . But they have continued to fix, improve, enhance and evolve the game continually since its initial release in 2001 while steadily, if slowly, growing the player base. SCREENSHOTS ACCOLADES ''World War II Online'' has received numerous industry press awards including GameSpy 's 2001 Gamers' Choice Sim of the Year and IGN's 2001 Persistent World Game of the Year. These awards are many times based on internet polls however, and an active effort is made in the official WWII Online forums to pack such polls with pro WWII Online votes. EXTERNAL LINKS
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